Becoming a well-known business brand from unknown might mean being popular. As in, many people know you exist. While that has some truth to it, where results lie as a business is the people who know you, knowing you well enough to trust you, connect with you, associate with you and buy from you.
As a person, I'm sure you would not want to relate with someone who does jell you. It will be very awkward. The same thing with your business. If people see you as a scam business or luxury buyers see you as too affordable, then there’s a problem.
What happens if you don't act towards taking your business from unknown to well-known brand?
You are prone to attracting customers who cannot afford your service.
You have no control of customers coming back for more because they can’t remember how they got the product or who they got the products from.
Your customers can't advocate or talk about your business because they don't feel the need to.
Introducing brand building and brand strategy as a solution.
The solution here is to craft out an identity or brand persona for your business. An identity that your ideal customers can be attracted to and can connect. Something unique enough to also help your business stand out from competitors and put your business as first taught when people think of the type of product you sell.
It should also be an identity that is scalable and can evolve with trends rather than becoming obsolete too quickly
Let's talk about a Legal Firm we created a brand persona for.
We had a legal firm come to us January 2023. Her name is Bernice and she founded Cardinal Counsel which was formerly known as Paradigm-stones Attorney. She ran Paradigm-stones Attorney with partners before she decided to pull out to continue with a fresh new identity.
While running as paradigm stones, she had issues with the quality of clients she was getting. She had to deal with clients not willing to pay her price, clients not balancing up and worst of all, clients not making her service easy for her.
We called her just a few weeks ago which is about 7 months since we worked on her brand and she said, “My business is now seen as a proper legal firm and not just a small business, when I go for events, people walk up to our stand just like they do other companies and between now and last year, revenue has doubled!"
This is something our founder experienced with Seriphics. As a branding agency we most times forget that our agency is also a business and we fell victim to this. We never really had our brand defined until the end of last year when we decided to put an end to attracting low quality clients.
We worked on our brand strategy with others on the team at the end of last year and we tested it before launch with the next couple of clients we spoke with. We got our first 2 million Naira project in April this year and since then we’ve always had clients worth that range. We’ve also had lot’s of creatives reach out for jobs and also creatives who want to have an internship.
This goes to show the impact the perception has on the business.
BRAND BUILDING AND BRAND STRATEGY IS THE KEY
The key here is brand building, but what does it mean?
To build a brand means to create and push a perception of your business, enough that people begin to understand it without you having to explain it. It also means becoming a business that people feel one with.
Define the brand
Defining what your business brand will be is a delicate process but is determined by what your competitor's brand is like, what your target customer is attract to or believes in and what your own goal for the business is as the founder. You need to find what satisfies these 3 points. This process is the first part of developing your brand strategy. This result is what we call "The Big Idea".
Determine your brand messaging, positioning and voice
Now that you know the big idea, communicating this is also crucial. You want to determine how best this brand should be spread to everyone. This can be achieved through determining the core message of the brand, in what tone of voice the message is said and how you want this message to be remembered through brand positioning.
Brand visual identity
Notice we haven't mentioned anything about logo or colors? Well, that's the last step before you start to publicize the brand. Your business logo, colors, typeface and imagery are visual elements used to communicate the brand. It aids the process of brand awareness and allows for brand consistency. It's after defining the brand that you then move to visual identity creation.
Brand awareness and marketing
Brand awareness is you letting people know about your brand. From determining the message and voice we not determine the mediums of communication. This is the beginning of brand awareness or what most people will call marketing.
Marketing can be for various reasons. It can be specifically for sales, when you purely sell a product through ads, but brand awareness marketing has the goal of winning hearts to the brand and this can be achieved through these mediums
Awareness campaigns: These campaigns are usually created to a cause, like a promotional activity for women during women's month where women get to learn basic skills in your business industry for free.
Content series: These content can be talking about a specific thing that your target customers have issues with and can be done on social media, blogs or on YouTube.
There are many ways to boost brand awareness but this ultimately increases brand value with positively affects your brand equity and over time your business becomes a known brand as you maintain consistency.
THE BRAND BUILDING TRAINING PROGRAM
If you had an expert hold your hand through this journey, what would that mean for you??
At Seriphics, we help businesses build brands as a service which would normally range from 1 Million to 20 Million Naira depending on the scale, type and industry of the business.
Imagine having the direct knowledge to execute yourself + guidance from us, meaning you have us to tell you do this and don't do this, thereby giving you the same results for just less than 10% of the cost, how would that be?
As a solopreneur or small business owner, we tend to see this branding thing as something for big businesses and corporations or it could just be that running it is too expensive.
Our comprehensive program covers the basics of brand building, from defining your brand persona to increasing brand awareness through marketing. You would also have guidance to set up your own team as you grow.
You get access to 15 days of training materials, such as templates, resources and guides, as well as 2 weeks of personalized coaching after the training for guidance on your journey.
Here's what we would cover in the program;
The truth about branding and why people buy brands
Competing outside or affordability and quality; knowing the real value of your product
Shaping brand perception
What brand strategy really is and how to develop it
Visual brand elements and how to utilize them as a brand communicator
Brand building and brand awareness
Brand consistency
How branding brings sales
Using AI to develop your brand
THE PACKAGES AND WHAT YOU GET
Deluxe Pack
15-day training
Brand building workbook
Template and resources for brand building
A simple brand identity (Logo, colour and typography system with a guide for application on Canva)
2-week follow-up and guidance during your brand launch
Standard pack
15-day training
Brand building workbook
Template and resources for brand building
You can select these options on checkout
WHO THIS IS FOR
1. You must be a small business owner or solopreneur
2. You must have a customer base or traction
3. You should be making between 200,000 naira to 1 million naira per month.
This program starting in November, 2023 and is available to just 10 small business owners so that we can study each business well and channel the teaching for your type of business for better long-term results.
So we want you to take advantage of this opportunity now! Sign ups will be closing soon so we can have enough time to study your business before we officially start.